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Our new emissions reduction target

Doing our part to keep global temperature rises to below 2 degrees

We’ve been carbon neutral since 2011, which means that we measure our greenhouse gas emissions and buy carbon offsets to balance them out.

It also means that we take action to reduce our emissions, like installing solar panels and making our buildings more energy efficient. Between 2011 and 2017, we reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 33%.

We’re always looking for the next step to take. That’s why in 2015, ahead of the Paris climate talks, we committed to setting a science-based target to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and to switching to 100% renewable electricity by 2020.

Emissions reduction target

Companies can use science-based methods to work out what their own share of worldwide emissions reductions need to be to keep global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial temperatures.

Using science-based methods, we’ve worked out that we need to reduce our emissions from gas, the bank’s cars and electricity by 16% by 2025[1].

The best part? We think we can exceed this target when we switch to 100% renewable electricity.

Towards 100% renewable electricity

We’ve been working hard to deliver on our commitment to switching to 100% renewable electricity. More than 70% of our greenhouse gas emissions are currently from electricity, so we know that this switch will make a huge contribution to reducing our emissions.

Our head office roof has had solar panels since 2008, and earlier this year we installed a new 32.5kW solar system on our National Contact Centre in Moe.

We plan to switch the rest of our electricity to renewables through our participation in the Melbourne Renewable Energy Project. Led by the City of Melbourne, the Melbourne Renewable Energy Project brings together 14 organisations to support the development of a wind farm being built in regional Victoria.

This year, we entered into a 10-year agreement to buy power and renewable energy certificates from the new Crowlands Wind Farm, which will be built and operated by clean energy company Pacific Hydro.

When the wind farm starts operating in 2019, we expect to reach our emissions reduction and renewable energy targets well ahead of our 2020 deadline.

More information on how we manage our environmental impacts is available here.

Photo credit: Pacific Hydro

[1] In technical terms: we will reduce our absolute scope 1 and 2 emissions by 16% by 2025 compared with our 2017 emissions. Our scope 1 and 2 emissions are defined as per the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.